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Full-Text Articles in Law
Critical Hermeneutics: The Intertwining Of Explanation And Understanding As Exemplified In Legal Analysis, George H. Taylor
Critical Hermeneutics: The Intertwining Of Explanation And Understanding As Exemplified In Legal Analysis, George H. Taylor
Articles
One of the most vexing questions in hermeneutics is whether it can be critical-whether it can engage in critique. In Part I of this Article, I show how within legal hermeneutics the element of critique is present even within those forms of legal interpretation most adherent to stances of "understanding." Here I concentrate on the work of Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia and demonstrate how distance, separation, critique is present within their theories. In Part II, I reverse emphases and show how elements of "understanding" persist within legal theories most avowedly reliant on forms of "explanation." My exemplar here …
Are There Nothing But Texts In This Class? Interpreting The Interpretive Turns In Legal Thought, Robin West
Are There Nothing But Texts In This Class? Interpreting The Interpretive Turns In Legal Thought, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Allan Hutchinson remarks at the beginning of his interesting article that Gadamer's writings have had only a peripheral influence on legal scholarship -- only occasionally cited, and then begrudgingly so, and never given the serious attention they deserve or require. Nevertheless, Hutchinson acknowledges, Gadamerian influences can be noted -- particularly in the now widely shared understanding that adjudication is, fundamentally, an interpretive exercise. Even with this qualification, though, I think Hutchinson understates Gadamer's impact. Whatever may be true of Gadamer's influence in other disciplines, his influence in law has been unambiguously both broad and deep -- although it has come …